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Magdalena on: Three Levels of Conflict

When Puck and I returned to the party Ricky was […] in the middle of what I like to call his A&E Biography. You know, his well-rehearsed life story in case anyone wants to film, record, document or otherwise preserve it for some future generation. The one that starts with, On a day that was more hazy than it was hot, my father left Juarez with six little girls, a pregnant wife, and a pocket full of cauliflower seeds. Middles out around: After working the fields from Washington state to San Diego, learning English from schoolchildren and earning the handle Cauliflower King, my father saved enough to buy 600 acres near Riverside, two Cadillacs, a house with Spanish tile and two swimming pools, even though he couldn’t swim. And climaxes somewhere near, And that’s when I said, Papa, I only have two goals: to run a Fortune 500 company and to see my face on the left side of the Wall Street Journal, next to a line drawing of Janet Reno stating her intentions to split my company for antitrust. If you’re lucky enough to be in his office when the story spills out, he’ll lean back in his leather chair, kick his boots onto his desk, stretch his arms towards the panoramic view behind his head and nod towards the wall, where the front page of the Journal hangs framed behind anti-glare glass.

—

I’ve heard the story maybe a gazillion times. So often, in fact, that I’ve stopped trying to correct his exaggerations, stopped trying to remind him that his mother came from money, stopped trying to include my name in the water-industry plot. Hell, on good days I can almost remember the first time I heard it. And then I believe him myself.

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